Acey68 Aug 17, 2023

Gov’t Mule returns to the ‘Dark Side’ for Boston tour stop

Brett Milano

Gov't Mule performs “Dark Side of the Moon” Friday at the Leader Bank Pavilion.

You can’t see Pink Floyd play “Dark Side of the Moon” for its 50th anniversary, since Floyd leaders Roger Waters and David Gilmour still hate each other too much. But you can see it done proud Friday at the Leader Bank Pavilion by Gov’t Mule, whose leader Warren Haynes is both a jam-band icon and a voracious music fan.

“My musical taste goes all over the map,” he said this week. “It started with soul music, my earliest influences were James Brown and Otis Redding. But I was lucky to have two older brothers, who were not only music nuts but record collectors as well. The first time I heard Pink Floyd was ‘Dark Side’ in 1973, and I loved it so much that I had to go backward and hear the rest. As with all the music that we choose to be influenced by, it’s timeless.”

The first “Dark Side of the Mule” show happened at the Orpheum in Boston: It was Halloween in 2008, and the band honored its annual tradition of a surprise cover set. “We only meant to do it that one time, but there was demand and now we’re bringing it back for the anniversary. We have so much reverence for that music that we try to keep the vibe of the original; song by song we make the decision of how far we’re going to stray. On this tour we’re opening it up more to interpretation.” Along with a good 90 minutes of Floyd, including all of ‘Dark Side’ and more, they’ll play an intro set of Mule originals.

Haynes says he’s met Roger Waters once, when Haynes was in the Allman Brothers Band and Eric Clapton joined them onstage; Clapton’s friend Waters was hanging out afterwards. “We also were both part of a tribute to Levon [Helm] a few years later. But I’ve never spoken to him or David Gilmour about what they might think of what we’re doing. I’m sure it would be a pretty strange issue.”

The Floyd shows are just one stretch of a long run of touring through this year. Future Mule shows will focus more on the new album “Peace…Like a River,” an epic one even by their standards. Full of long and ambitious tracks, the album was recorded in tandem with a blues disc that they already released and toured last summer.

“On paper I suppose that sounds a little strange and daunting, but it turned out to really be the opposite. We’d start at noon with the ‘Peace’ songs and work till nine at night, then we’d have some dinner, go to the small room and play blues. That was our way of shutting our brains off and playing for fun.” Most of the ‘Peace’ songs were written during shutdown. “That was one good thing about it, the ability to settle down and write a ton of music. We wanted to bring back the idea of longer, more complex arrangements, and part of the mission was to have songs that sound like they go together, but don’t sound like each other.”

In fact the album often brings their proggy, Floyd-like side into play. “Gov’t Mule started as a side project [from the Allman Brothers], and we thought we were only going to make one record. At the time it was our notion to being back the improvisational rock trio. Once it became apparent that we were going to be a real band, we started bringing out more of our influences. So here it is, 12 albums later and we’re still painting in colors we haven’t used in the past.”